Spotify is cracking down on third-party playlist services, starting with Spotlister

No more pay-to-play

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Spotify is cracking down on third-party playlist services, started with Spotlister. Like many other services, Spotlister specialized in getting songs onto popular playlists in exchange for cash – a practice Spotify says is against its terms of use.

With 71 million paid subscribers, Spotify is an essential tool for new artists, with curated playlists getting people listening to music they might otherwise miss.

Unfortunately, those lists aren't necessarily organic and curators aren't always as independent as they'd have you believe.

Sometimes artists pay to have their new tracks considered, and other times they explicitly buy positions on playlists through like Spotlister. The more followers a playlist has, the more its curator can charge.

'Bad for artists and bad for fans'

It's not a new phenomenon – for as long as there's been music on the radio, record labels have offered cash to DJs in exchange for spinning their discs. The difference is scale, and companies like Spotlister have transformed it into a whole business with a sliding scale of prices depending on the number of subscribers each playlist can reach.

In a statement to The Daily Dot, Spotify condemned the practice as "bad for artists and bad for fans", but this is the first time it's taken visible action against it.

It's likely that Spotlister is just the first on the chopping block – the whole third-party curation industry could soon disappear.